The Diseased Heart

Chapter 14

A passage from the book: Hidden Sanity

Now that Riley had discovered our true intentions, we didn't have to hold her up in the basement. Now we were free to ask her about her life, being a Crawler. Her story is quite interesting!

To start, she explained how she had first encountered the virus. She had been at her high-school during the first breakout. The vaccines being given out that day had been among the infected batch, and she had witnessed it first hand. This was at the beginning, when the Virus was able to turn individuals almost immediately after infection, needless to say, It was a bloodbath.

She and her two friends, Jasmine and Megan, were waiting in the line to get the vaccines, when one child who had just been given the shot started throwing up blood.

Everyone was panicking, according to Riley, and only a mere handful of minutes later, the Crawler legs had ripped from his back and he had began attacking anyone in his sight as the Virus started to take hold of other students around them.

Riley and her friends ran through the halls of her school while people were panicking and screaming around them, and Crawlers began killing people. She explained how she had previously thought horror movies exaggerated how much blood would result from certain deaths, until she watched students tearing the limbs off of their fellow classmates.

Megan and Jasmine were running to the nearest exit when Riley saw a few of her other friends being cornered in a classroom by a Crawler of one of the teachers. They were barring the door shut with their bodies and a large shelf from inside the room, but the Crawler was steadily winning the battle. With it being newly turned, though, it was weaker.

Riley said she grabbed the nearest object, she never even knew what it was, and threw it at the Crawler's head. They turned to her, snarled in rage and began charging, but was then tackled from the side by another recently turned Crawler, blindly tearing into anythjng that moved. It gave Riley the opportunity to run to try getting her other friends out of the room, she stated that she was running on pure adrenaline, and that she wasn't even sure if she was awake or not.

The door had been jammed inward with the Crawler's constant banging, but the four of them managed to push it back out, letting her three friends David, Daniel, and Travis escape with her and the others.

When they regrouped, they realized that the pandemic was far worse than they had initially feared. While narrowly avoiding Crawlers and citizens, they ran to the nearest of their houses. Jasmine's home, however, was utterly destroyed. Her entire roof had caved in, likely from a Crawler ramming straight through the wall and breaking the support. Jasmine was able to grab some sentimental items from the ruins before they had to run again.

They managed to get to Daniel's house, where they hid out in his basement. Apparently, his parents had been prepared for the end of the world, so his basement was more of a fallout shelter, though his parents and cat were nowhere to be found.

They had managed to live down there for three weeks before they were ambushed by a gang of thugs and had to escape. They managed to keep some supplies and weapons, but not much more than their lives.

The small group of six had been travelling around the remains of their home city for several months before they had a fatal run-in with a Crawler, they had been running from it through the forest, but Riley had gotten infected when trying to help one friend who had gotten hit against a tree. She didn't realize she was infected until after the Crawler had fled. That was when Travis had shot her in the head to kill her before she turned.

Riley suspected she had woken up nearly a week afterwards, covered in her own blood and light sensitive. She had never considered she would remain sane at that point. She had practically accepted that her death was imminent.

She had forgotten how long she lived, terrified that any day she would turn. She knew it was at least weeks, though, that she wandered alone.

When she did finally turn, it was at the worst possible time. The story she told us was that there was a group of people nearby, and when she had turned, she scared them all into the forest where there had been an established Crawler nest. She suspected they didn't make it back out. I must admit myself, though, this part of the story seemed off to me. I suspect she was trying to hide something.

She spent several days in denial she was Sane, and would fully turn any day then, that her mind was just lagging behind somehow, but she realized that likely would never happen after the third day of mindless wandering. She finally started to get a grip of her new world.

Sleeping during the day, hunting at night, staying in caves or apartments. Anywhere. She even tried joining a nest once, but they rejected her. She later realized that was a good thing, as pretending to be Feral that much might take a toll on her mind.

She lived alone for months, when she met a small group of six girls, and helped them leave the city under the disguise of a regular human who was also trying to find safety. Sadly, it didn't take long for them to discover she was a Crawler.

Another week passed, they lived in the very cabin we all now live in. After an incident with sunlight and Riley's eyes, they discovered they had been being watched via cameras up in the rafters. Upon closer inspection, the flash went off, blinding her again and sending her falling to the floor.

She was certain she cracked her ulna in the fall, but barely got a chance to assess the situation before she was shot in the head yet again! Due to Crawler's resilience, she survived, but was unconscious for days. She mentioned that she had suspected It was a group of raiders again, who may imprison the other humans and try to kill her.

When she woke up, she was bound in a room with a knife in her back. To add to the situation, her old friend, Megan, was there too! It wasn't raiders that had attacked, it was her old group of friends, still alive after all that time.

Riley's instincts were too strong for her to even speak without snarling, leading Megan to assume she was Feral, after all, a Sane Crawler wasn't even a possibility at that point, why would she think anything different? The thibg is, Megan had believed the stories told by Riley's friends that she was Sane, and was determined to prove it.

When she did finally have solid evidence, she ran out of the room in excitement, letting Riley have the chance to leave through the window and hunt, allowing her to explain herself when she was to return.

Not much happened between then and when we first met her. Although her friend Raven had turned, leading to permanent scarring across Riley's entire body and face, but thankfully, nothing hindering, as any truly hindering wounds would be repaired, as a Crawler.

We hope to know more about her as time goes on.